Lemon: Don’t you think it’s a bit different considering what happened on 9/11? And the people have said there’s a need for it in Lower Manhattan, so that’s why it’s being built there. What about 10, 20 blocks . . . Midtown Manhattan, considering the circumstances behind this? That’s not understandable?
Patel: In America, we don’t tell people based on their race or religion or ethnicity that they are free in this place, but not in that place —
Lemon: [interrupting] I understand that, but there’s always context, Mr. Patel . . . this is an extraordinary circumstance. You understand that this is very heated. Many people lost their loved ones on 9/11 —
Patel: Including Muslim Americans who lost their loved ones. . . .
Lemon: Consider the context here. That’s what I’m talking about.
Patel: I have to tell you that this seems a little like telling black people 50 years ago: you can sit anywhere on the bus you like – just not in the front.
Lemon: I think that’s apples and oranges – I don’t think that black people were behind a Terrorist plot to kill people and drive planes into a building. That’s a completely different circumstance.
Patel: And American Muslims were not behind the terrorist plot either.
If the purpose of this mosque, as we are lead to believe, is to create this tolerant environment, to avoid anything like a 9/11 ever repeating, you have to ask why didn’t one of those 100 [existing] mosques already accomplish such a thing.
Sarah Palin politico (via brooklynmutt, liberalsarecool, robot-heart-politics)
You know which country has a lot of churches and cathedrals? Germany. If the supposed purpose of all those structures is spreading the word of this supposed Jesus who supposedly is all about loving thy neighbor and whatnot, then why did those churches fail to prevent the rise of Hitler and this Holocaust thing that never actually happened anyway? Why!?!? I ask you WHY?!?!?!
(via squashed)
Because there is a difference between what you can do, and what you should do. For instance, you can build a Catholic Church next to a playground. Should you? Or am I alone in thinking it’s a little too soon for that?
John Oliver, the Daily Show.
I can type reliably up to about 2.5 mph.
Stephen Wolfram, discussing his setup.
Hallowed Ground
Just a few of the things going on at or near Ground Zero. (via Daring Fireball)
High Cost of Free Parking
If developers were allowed to face directly the high land costs of providing so much parking, the number of spaces would be a result of a careful economic calculation rather than a matter of satisfying a legal requirement. Parking would be scarcer, and more likely to have a price — or a higher one than it does now — and people would be more careful about when and where they drove.
The subsidies are largely invisible to drivers who park their cars — and thus free or cheap parking spaces feel like natural outcomes of the market, or perhaps even an entitlement. Yet the law is allocating this land rather than letting market prices adjudicate whether we need more parking, and whether that parking should be free.
I’ve got a little list
From digby:
-
Tea Party’ers are not more likely to have racist tendencies than other conservatives.
(Except they are.) -
Democrats are scheming to hit 94 percent of small business owners with tax increases.
(Except they aren’t.) -
Bloody violence is out of control along the Mexican border, and illegal immigrants are streaming into America at record levels.
(Except it’s not and they’re not.) -
Obamacare will send Medicare spiraling out of control.
(Except it won’t.) -
Marriage is a religious union that’s all about procreation.
(Except it isn’t.) -
Voters say cutting the deficit is more important than creating jobs.
(Except they don’t.) -
Social Security is going broke, it adds to the deficit, and we have to raise the retirement age because people are living longer.
(Except it’s not, it doesn’t and we don’t.) -
The earth is getting cooler.
(Except it’s really really not.)
Small enough to print, laminate, and keep in your pocket, David Gregory (et al.). Go and do likewise.
It’s up to Republicans to decide if they agree with this strategy. Do they want an issue or do they want us to get it done quickly?
Jim Manley, spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
Statements like this boggle the mind. Welcome back from Mars, Jim, how has the weather been on The Red Planet? Much rain since your arrival there in the early-70s?
Statements like this boggle the mind. Welcome back from Mars, Jim, how has the weather been on The Red Planet? Much rain since your arrival there in the early-70s?
The future does not belong to those who are content with today, apathetic toward common problems and their fellow man alike, timid and fearful in the face of new ideas and bold projects. Rather it will belong to those who can blend vision, reason and courage in a personal commitment to the ideals and great enterprises of American Society.
Edward M. Kennedy, in an undelivered paragraph written for his RFK eulogy. Print out and post in the White House if you please because we are not on drugs. We have judged the evidence and find you timid and fearful in the face of old ideas and positively cowering in the face of anything like a new idea.
We were not deceived by the idiotic rhetoric of the far right. We knew you were a centrist and a pragmatist from the get-go. We are inherently sympathetic to the cause and appreciate the moments of progress, no matter how diminished or incremental they may be, when those moments have stumbled and sputtered into being. Unlike the people you classify as not on drugs, we actually give you credit for them. And but so we’re getting awfully tired of being portrayed as a villain by the same group that treats FOXnews as a thoroughly impartial and purely journalistic concern.
As was noted on the crazed liberal outlet msnbc the other night, right now in China people are commuting on a spanking-new ~200mph MagLev train. In America, we’re un-paving roads because we can’t afford them anymore. Precisely where in that sentence can you find the “great enterprises of American Society,” Mr. Gibbs? That’s what makes us uneasy. That’s why we’re crying out for some leadership, especially if it’s just tilting at windmills. Because that’s a part of leading: taking up an important cause, no matter how unpopular or unheralded, and fighting for it, whatever may come. Yes: even if you lose.
And, not coincidentally, that is precisely what we have never seen out of this administration. Must be all the drugs.
We were not deceived by the idiotic rhetoric of the far right. We knew you were a centrist and a pragmatist from the get-go. We are inherently sympathetic to the cause and appreciate the moments of progress, no matter how diminished or incremental they may be, when those moments have stumbled and sputtered into being. Unlike the people you classify as not on drugs, we actually give you credit for them. And but so we’re getting awfully tired of being portrayed as a villain by the same group that treats FOXnews as a thoroughly impartial and purely journalistic concern.
As was noted on the crazed liberal outlet msnbc the other night, right now in China people are commuting on a spanking-new ~200mph MagLev train. In America, we’re un-paving roads because we can’t afford them anymore. Precisely where in that sentence can you find the “great enterprises of American Society,” Mr. Gibbs? That’s what makes us uneasy. That’s why we’re crying out for some leadership, especially if it’s just tilting at windmills. Because that’s a part of leading: taking up an important cause, no matter how unpopular or unheralded, and fighting for it, whatever may come. Yes: even if you lose.
And, not coincidentally, that is precisely what we have never seen out of this administration. Must be all the drugs.
Lemkin 